Re: what about 48 bits?

[Jon Lewis <jlewis () lewis org>]

On Sun, 4 Apr 2010, A.B. Jr. wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Lots of traffic recently about 64 bits being too short or too long.
>
> What about mac addresses? Aren't they close to exhaustion? Should be. Or it
> is assumed that mac addresses are being widely reused throughout the world?
> All those low cost switches and wifi adapters DO use unique mac addresses?

Since they only really need to be unique per broadcast domain, it doesn't 
really matter.  You can I could use the same MAC addresses on all our home 
gear, and never know it.  For manufacturers, it's probably reasonably safe 
to reuse MAC addresses they put on 10mbit ISA ethernet cards...if they 
were a manufacturer back then.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis                   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
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